Friday, August 20, 2010

Dec. 2 and March 29 in Cleveland? The forecast is for considerable storminess.

Jan. 15 and Feb. 24 in Chicago? Apparently, clear skies.

Give Dwyane Wade credit. Amid a summer of Heat villainy, he continues to emerge as a voice of reason.

His returns to Chicago this season are setting up like nothing close to what LeBron James is expected to receive in Cleveland.

Thursday, Wade spent time on WSCR in Chicago, promoting his charity weekend there. During the radio interview, he was asked about his spurning of his hometown during free agency, after dropping numerous hints about the possibility of a return.

Dwyane Wade has spent the offseason saying the right things.

He was as smooth as, well, the anti-LeBron.

“Like I said, it was very close and I had to take my emotional side out of Chicago and not making an emotional decision,” he said. “But, at the end of the day, I think those guys understood, first of all, they have got a great team. They did an unbelievable job at getting the right team around them to get themselves in a position to compete for a championship real soon. They did a great job.

Leave it to a beat writer in Miami to get the pulse of Chicago Bulls' fans about D-Wade. What a f$%^ing moron. Maybe I'm in the minority of Bulls' fans, but I hate anything related to that punk group of chumps down in "South Beach". Wade can talk a good talk about Chicago being his home, but the only reason he's not the most hated athlete in Chicago is because we all hate LeBron just slightly more. Warm reception at the UC? I think we'll save the cheers for our own team.

The only reason I want Wade to be successful at all is because I'm hoping LeBron gets hurt near the end of the regular season and the Heat win the title without him. That way that little punk-bitch has to accept the ring that his teammates earned while he sat on the bench with a broken leg. And now I'm hoping he gets hurt colliding into this ass-hat Ira Winkleman and they both end up in wheelchairs. Stick to Miami and your hated Heat. Leave the real basketball, and the real fans, in Chicago where it belongs.

A couple minor news items came out over the past few days, and I didn't feel like creating a whole blog post for either, but on another slow August day (is there a worse month in sports than August? Seriously?) I figure it's worth an update.

First, Rudy Fernandez no longer wants to play in the NBA, or at least he's willing to say that in hopes of getting his release from the Blazers.

"He has indicated he would like to return to Europe to continue his basketball career," Miller told Yahoo! Sports on Wednesday. "He is more comfortable in Europe. He'd rather be in Europe than the NBA. He understands the circumstances in which he wouldn't be coming back. I don't see any scenario in which he'd want to be back."

Well I can think of a scenario where Rudy would love to return to the NBA. One where he's not on the Blazers and isn't losing a couple million dollars a year over what Europe would pay him.

Rudy's gone on to discuss how he was depressed last season, doesn't like his role, and feels the Blazers broke promises. I'm not going to jump on him. This is a guy who probably lost about 6 million bucks so far by coming to the NBA and doesn't feel he's had an appropriate chance to play his style of game to earn a quality NBA contract.

I'm sure promises were made given how much he had to leave on the table to come over, and so he has every right to be pissed off that those promises were broken.

However, while I understand Rudy's plight, at this point, he's certainly made himself undesirable for teams to trade for him. That may certainly be his intention as it's likely he's being incredibly straight forward when he says this isn't what he wants, and he wants to play in Europe again.

As for Xavier Henry, he's still battling with Memphis over whether a few hundred thousand in his contract will be guaranteed or not, and what types of things need to happen to make that money guaranteed.

The center of the argument hinges on Memphis desire to make part of his money incentive based on achieving one of three metrics (all rookie team, rookie / sophomore team inclusion, or 15 minutes a game for 70+ games). It's common to have incentives in contracts (virtually every rookie contract now has them), but performance incentives are rare in rookie contracts.

Is Memphis pushing the envelope too hard here? I'd think they are well within their rights to try to push it however they want. As noted on shamsports creative financing in the NBA article, this is a tactic the Spurs have used all the time.

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BullBearSock

The focus here will be the Chicago Bulls, and occasionally some Bears and White Sox news. BullBearSock will mostly feature links and quotes from other websites and blogs, but also feature the thoughts of 5 regular (die-hard) Bulls, Bears and White Sox fans. Join the discussion by commenting and sending links. [Contributors: 2j, DC, Kmart, Pete and PK]